Hiding From the Heart?

 The mind becomes a place the soul goes to  hide from the heart?

Michael Singer, living untethered, page 104 (New Harbinger/Sounds True, 2022)

The wise words above are very, very true.

Well what does it mean, crazy lady?

There is a common defense mechanism many of use to deal with difficult emotions, or our fear of having to deal with difficult emotions, and that is intellectualization. Have you heard of it? I was quite fascinated when I learned about  this defense mechanism in one of my many psych classes years ago. I realized right away how I "intellectualized" my way through life; how I lived in my head much more than in my heart because it was easier to think and analyze than it was to "feel".  When I felt the first twinges of "pain" I would automatically go running to my head to hide, spending much of my  time and energy figuring it out. I would go over the cause of  the pain or potential pain disturbance,  how it came to be, who or what was to blame, how I could "fix" whatever caused it, how I could prevent it from happening again.  I could spend hours, days, even years doing that instead of just feeling what was there! I did not want to experience the pain. It was easier to think than it was to feel. I was hiding in my head so I didn't have to be in my heart.

Do you hide in your head? 

I nChapter 21 of his book, Singer speaks to this tendency of ours. He explains that the spiritual heart stores our samskaras.

....emotions are generated by the heart. Not just nice emotions-all emotions. If someone does something that hurts you or makes you feel jealous-you feel that pain and turmoil in your heart. Singer, page 104

Unlike thoughts emotions do not talk to us through words or images (the words and images only come after we automatically  pull the emotion into our minds for analysis) and emotions don't come and go..  Emotions are more like non-verbal energetic vibrations that are always there, flowing through the heart. We just don't notice them until they change. As that energy shifts, they may flow up and over us in a second like a wave.  Sometimes that wave may be refreshing and other times it may feel like a tsunami. These changes seem unpredictable and for that reason frightening. Thinking is much less threatening and that is why we often hide out in the head. 

If, however, we could keep our hearts open and stay there rather than in the mind...this emotional energy could wash our samskaras up and out; it  can cleanse and refresh our insides. We just have to be willing to resist the urge to run away from our emotions, to stop judging them as good or bad, right or wrong, should be or shouldn't be so we are not constantly reaching for the pleasant ones and pushing away ( which means pushing down) the unpleasant ones; so we are allowing all the waves to come and go. 

How do we do that, crazy lady?

Well Michael Singer and Maharshi and the Buddha and so many others simply tell us to fall back into the Seat of Self, into that shunyata ( empty spacious awareness) and observe this emotional energy within us from there, just as we observe our thinking.  It isn't who we are...it is just energetic phenomena that we have this wonderful opportunity to witness and experience. We don't have to get all tangled up in it but if we are...we untie those knots from the top layer down and we let it all flow through the heart. 

Hmm! 

All is well!